‘I couldn’t walk out’: Clarkson knew Hawthorn would have to sack him

Alastair Clarkson has admitted he always knew Hawthorn would have to sack him to bring his tenure to an end and declared it will be “enormously difficult” to part ways with the club at week’s end.

Clarkson’s 17-year tenure as Hawks senior coach will come to an end on Saturday afternoon, with premiership captain Sam Mitchell to take the reigns amid a controversial and fast-tracked handover.

In an expansive interview on AFL 360, Clarkson said the hardest part of his pending departure from the club would be leaving behind players he helped draw to Hawthorn at the trade table with the promise of a grand vision.

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“The game itself is about bringing talent to your footy club and that‘s what’s been enormously difficult for me to leave,” he said, pointing to examples such as Jaeger O’Meara, Chad Wingard, Jarman Impey and Tom Phillips.

“These guys you’re still selling part of your vision of what we can do … the hard part for me is I never wanted to abandon the vision I had and that sort of stuff, the chance that they had to try and do something special with this club and I couldn’t just bring myself to just walk out on that.

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“So it was probably always going to be if it wasn’t now, then you get to the trade period and we bring someone else in and the same message would be sold to them and my loyalty to them … it was probably always going be in a sense that they (Hawthorn) were going to have to tiptoe me because I just couldn’t walk out on those relationships.”

The four-time premiership coach said he was “comfortable” with the club calling time on his stint, admitting once again that the messaging around the now-infamous handover could’ve been handled better.

“I knew the baton change was going to happen at some point in time,” he said.

“I didn’t necessarily know it was gonna be Mitch (Sam Mitchell), but we brought him back to the club for the purpose of making a decision on whether or not we thought he was the best guy to coach the club after me.

“It’s been a little bit messy how that’s all transpired, but we all sit here now just really comfortable on what it will look like for the footy club going forward.”

Originally published asClarko: Why Hawks had to sack me

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